Engineered immune surveillance: long-lived programmed immune cells that patrol for early cancer
For people at very high cancer risk, install a small population of engineered immune cells that live for years and destroy cells showing early cancer signals before a tumour forms.
Immune surveillance normally eliminates most incipient tumours; carriers of BRCA, Lynch or TP53 mutations and people with clonal haematopoiesis face lifelong high risk. Advances in memory stem T cell engineering, logic-gated receptors responsive to stress ligands or shared neoantigens, and safety switches make a persistent, low-level engineered surveillance population conceivable. The proposal is a research programme to define target ligands of pre-malignant cells, engineer persistent gated cells with off-switches, and demonstrate prevention in genetically engineered mouse models before first-in-human studies in the highest-risk carriers.
- Dormant cells and minimal residual disease · After a 'successful' treatment, cells can sleep for years then relapse. We can barely detect them and cannot target them.
- Inherited risk is mostly unidentified · Most people who carry a high-risk cancer gene do not know it until they or a relative gets cancer.
- Cold tumours and the immunosuppressive microenvironment · Most tumours keep the immune system out or asleep, so immunotherapy helps only a minority.
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not linked directly; found by shared links- InstitutionQIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute
Shares CAR-NK & CAR-macrophage, TCR-T cell therapy, BRCA1 / BRCA2 (HRD).
- IdeaRegionally delivered mesothelin CAR-T with PD-1 blockade
Shares Armoured, logic-gated & next-gen CARs, Cold tumours and the immunosuppressive microenvironment, CAR-T cell therapy.
- IdeaTest every possible mutation in every cancer gene so no result is 'uncertain'
Shares Inherited risk is mostly unidentified, BRCA1 / BRCA2 (HRD), TP53.
- PersonChristine E. Brown
Shares Armoured, logic-gated & next-gen CARs, CAR-T cell therapy.
- IdeaGo back to families of women who died of ovarian cancer and offer BRCA testing
Shares Inherited risk is mostly unidentified, BRCA1 / BRCA2 (HRD).
- IdeaLet clinics contact relatives directly when a cancer gene is found
Shares Inherited risk is mostly unidentified, BRCA1 / BRCA2 (HRD).
- PersonRenier J. Brentjens
Shares Armoured, logic-gated & next-gen CARs, CAR-T cell therapy.
- IdeaOffer everyone at 30 a test for the cancer genes that matter
Shares Inherited risk is mostly unidentified, BRCA1 / BRCA2 (HRD).